Tangerine Christmas
by Gingerfloss
Summary: There's only one member of the team with a dislike of the festive period, and when Tony Stark happens to meet two doe-eyed scientists with the same opinion he has about her opinion, they recruit themselves for a festive mission nobody's going to forget. (Avengers with a little help from SHIELD) (Pepperony/Fitzsimmons)


"How can you not like Christmas? That's like… not a human thing to dislike.."

"Fitz! Don't be so rude! She's allowed not to like it,"

"But it's the only time of year that you get to see Coulson smile… Even may almost managed one last year when we almost blew up that turkey.."

"You know she can hear every word we're saying don't you? The integrated computer system is probably picking up every word to play back later!"

"Yes? But it's not like it's not true… I don't understand how a woman can't like Christmas… You, if I remember correctly love it Jemma…"

"Of course I do! It's the only time of year apart from occasionally when you remember on my birthday that I get a present from you!"

Tony Stark almost smiled at the young woman's words, the science babies (as himself, Banner and assorted other people had dubbed them) where causing havoc in his private labs in the Avengers tower, Coulson had asked Pepper if she wouldn't mind looking after them for a few days and she had, of course, imminently left them in his care. Secretly, Tony couldn't really blame her, she would have had completely and utterly no idea what they'd been discussing for the past few hours. Well, more exactly, he'd been talking, Fitz had been nodding and attempting to join in and Simmons had been gazing at him like a completely awestruck teenage cosplayer outside the tower. Tony was starting to think that these two weren't often introduced to any of the many superhero's and mutants that where on SHIELDS books.

How they'd gotten onto the subject of his sort-of girlfriends dislike of Christmas was still confusing him, but the two young agents had been discussing it for the past ten minutes. Obviously they seemed to agree with his opinion that it was a really strange thing for the strawberry blonde to have such a dislike of that she'd bluntly pointed out to Tony last year (after the bunny but before the whole crazy Satsuma man problem) that they should just disappear off to his private island and pretend the entire thing didn't exist. Tony really did have to make a mental note to remember to try and tempt it out to her exactly why she didn't like it so much.

And to remind Fitzsimmons that the fact he was, of course developing new armour technology for himself (and someone else) was a secret. Obviously, he'd discovered pretty quickly after blowing up every last one of his suits and having the reactor removed that both had actually been very bad ideas. As much as it had seemed like a very romantic gesture at the time, the fact that he now no longer had a suit to protect the woman he had tried to be romantic to with had caused quite a few problems. Pepper had been kidnapped three times in the last year and every time he'd been able to do nothing but call SHIELD and then worry himself stupid about the fact that she was gone. And having the reactor removed had left a hole in his chest that was refusing to heal and almost impossible to cover with a skin graft. It also meant Pepper no longer had her nightlight and hadn't been sleeping properly. So there was a new arc reactor, no longer there to keep the shrapnel out of his chest, but to fill the gap and work as a new power source for the new suit he was creating.

The only problem with this plan being that because he'd only decided this was a good idea about three weeks ago, he was still resigned to laying on his back on the couch in the lab a lot more than he wanted to. Apparently re-inserting the device after so many months of not having anything in there at all had not only been very painful, but also lead to him having to spend a lot more time sitting down, and being used as a thing to sit on, than he'd ever thought was possible. But even that didn't seem like such a chore with the two young scientists to keep him company; at least they had more respect than Bruce and didn't sit on his legs every five minutes.

"Um… Mr ...Doctor Stark?" The Englishwoman piped up, glancing at him from around the side of the computer screen, which was technically see through, so she didn't really need to do it, but Tony wasn't going to argue with watching her doe-eye face peeking at him like he was a god: "I was thinking, your armour, could you install the shielding and the hyper-capacity filters from the Stark 347 and possibly use the generators from the last stand missiles from the 96 mission set in the boots?"

"And then increase the tension the in shoulder cavities to 47 and you can carry at least another 2 full masses at capacity level…" The other interjected, appearing from underneath a workbench with a wrench clasped in one hand: "Oh! And then reverse the polarity in the underside of the framework…"

Tony looked from one to the other and then back again, grinning at the pair before grabbing for his latest issue of his favourite tech magazine, flicking it open to a random page and dropping it over his head and slumping down on the couch for a nap: "Don't break my stuff, blow it up or paint it green. Okay? I don't want to look like the Iron Cucumber."

"Yes Sir!" The two squeaked in unison, sounding like two children in a sweet shop that had just been handed their pocket money. Stark was starting to think that looking after these two wasn't actually the hardest thing he'd done this month.


End file.
